Fear and Loathing
by anesor
Summary: Short musings of the KC before the endgame at the Keep.


**Before the Siege - - -**

_--Knight Commander_

The pieces are all in play. I hope we are ready for this. I take a moment to pray that we were, as I look out over the land. My lands, for all the good it does me.

Yesterday, I had the spellslingers destroy anything that was still close to the walls. Trees, sheds, buildings, all gone and the debris shifted to make siege equipment harder to drag close. I even ordered the destruction of some of the older buildings right outside the outer gate. Some idiot built them much too close to a defensive wall. The last non-combatants had been evacuated days ago.

I am sorry that I had to destroy someone's homes and dreams. I hope we will live long enough, that I can apologize.

Is there anything else I still can do to tip the battle for us?

And this King of Shadows has done this too many times, what won't he expect? What am I missing?

I am depending on mostly untried troops, with an untried Commander. For all my success in combat, we are now playing a different game. But are we both playing the same game? And which of us understands the true game better?

Did I make the best choices in building up the Keep? Is there some fortification I missed? I wish the ground was less rocky that we could have made more extensive defense ditches. Too much of the Keep's walls have an essentially flat approach. Veedle knows so much engineering, but was I blinded by his expertise and missed something stupid?

My Greycloaks have fought, if at all, only in small skirmishes. Not in pain and death, where your best friend falls nearby, and you can only hope one of the priests can get to them in time. But you have to keep fighting. Did these farmboys and laborers get enough training? Should I have tried to hire an expert trainer? What part of the other defenses would I have had to cut? They know what is at stake, the very air speaks of the doom we face if we lose. Will they hold?

My officers, from Kana, to Bevil, to Light of Heaven. Do their men believe in them? Enough to attack or hold their places, in despite of even the undead? Did I get enough healers and apprentices, both arcane and divine, to make a difference?

And my companions, the wild cards of my hand. Not that Casavir would like to be called wild, but they all bring powers and skills far beyond my Greycloak officers. Living with their bickering, and encouraging their progress is enough to make anyone prematurely gray. Most of them were good enough, and they understand the stakes of this dark game. Worse is restraining the evil ones, limiting the damage they do, to only the enemy.

All while I try to hide the loathing I feel for them.

I shake myself, trying to resist the dark cloud reaching out to my Keep, smothering all of the lighter emotions. Pleasure, a fine wine, and even the simple contentment of stretching the kinks out of your muscles, all snuffed out right now.

An argument drifts up from one of the towers. But the darker feelings are magnified. Anger, fear, envy, hatred... all these feelings are so much closer to the surface. Its so much harder to try to forget what your allies are really like. The dark souls we need to win this war. But it is getting so hard to conceal my hatred.

I envy Casavir, that he can let his show.

Of course Casavir hates Bishop the most, his opposite in almost every way. But as evil as the ranger is, he is still smart, skillful, and competent. Sometimes even darkly funny. He says what manners forbid, even as I often think the same thing. I fear that he has no loyalty to anything, and could turn on us even though it would make for a bad place to live in. Spiking Luskans always brings a glint to his eye. And he gets more laughs, egging the others on in their arguments, playing cat to our mice. We provide real wealth to his mercenary spirit, plenty for his various unsavory amusements between missions. He only returns, and cocks his eyes challengingly when he arrives reeking, of cheap perfume. As long as he has his fun, he brings much to the game.

I sometimes wonder and feel pity at whatever twisted what had to have been a normal child at some point, into this horse's ass. We'll never know, and I no longer care.

The sorrow of wasted potential, while still a dark emotion, doesn't drown me in itself. I can again again think about brighter times: the thrill of winning the archery challenge back in West Harbor, the feeling of rebirth on emerging from an undead crypt just as dawn breaks, and the glee we felt after defeating all those fire elementals outside Jerro's Haven.

Shandra. A sudden mix of responsibility, annoyance, and guilt fill my mind. She'd always been underfoot, and would have followed me into a brothel if I'd had the time. But she had not deserved death at his hands.

Jerro is worse than Bishop. How he could be a recent ancestor of Shandra, must be one of the great mysteries of the Realms. He sometimes says those dark truths of politics and necessity that I am also thinking, which makes me feel dirty. He's seen too much, and done far worse, in his dedicated quest for power. His soul is damned, the only question was which infernal power will get to claim and keep his soul when he dies. But he is making his own bed to lie in, board by board, and I will not regret if he dies against the King. Jerro's competence, power, and obsession to beat the King are undeniable. But I fear that, once this is over, his threat will be as great. I can only hope, as cowardly as it makes me feel, that he returns to planewalking once this threat is over.

His goal may once have been noble, but like the Illefarn Guardian he is locked in combat with, he has forgotten the original purpose was to protect. Not destroy. There was a trace visible after he realized that he'd killed kin, but that seems the last gasp of who he once was.

He must have been better, once. Or else his family would not have disappeared into the populace and she still had had nice family memories of him. I prayed again that she had reached whatever summer-lands she'd believed in. Being duped by infernals, and killed by an obsessed grandfather should not have tainted her. I, however, am very afraid that I have been tainted by this war. The gith weapon and the shadows reaching out to try to claim me. A shiver went through through me as I looked outward.

Jerro's opponent, this "King of Shadows," a remnant of the self-sacrifice of the Illefarn Guardian. He's fought so long, I fear his knowledge and power will erase our world, as his is long gone. I loathe that it seems whoever he touches is corrupted. Whatever darkness they have, he brings out and expands. He is the rotten meat of a failed preservation, that some careless mages created. A strange combination of creatures, like a manticore, but still rotten to the core.

He was probably something akin to a paladin, to give up so much to save his people, only to lose the battle and his sanity. I could only hope his soul had gotten separated from that shell and been accepted by his god. Now this... shard of him is like a rabid dog, and must be put down. Necessity. But I feel more pity than hate.

I sighed, and a flash of fire from the armory caught my eye. They must have been making repairs or forging last minute tools. The forge wasn't that far from the gate, so I'd better make sure it was shut down by dawn. We didn't need more fire sources for the enemy to make use of.

Fire, just thinking about it, and my anger flares. My greatest loathing is for Qara. She is too stupid for belief. No intelligence, no dedication, no competence, and little skill. In some strange way, I was glad when Jerro joined us, as I had come to believe that all sorcerers were only incompetent idiots with power, based on her. At first I believed she was just spoiled and would grow up. But every mission she deigns to join, and every smackdown the gods send her, never give her a clue. Its never her fault. Her delusions of power, her callousness in using it, and sheer stupidity in her behavior wore out every hope she would grow. She only approved of destruction. Every mission, we weren't doing our job, when we had one healer set just to keep her alive, despite her stupidity.

At least Jerro and Bishop know when to stop, and are useful. The King is competent, even in his insanity. Qara can't do much more than a barrel of blastglobes, and is a lot less pleasant. She has everything I wanted as a child, but is wasting it away.

For Bishop, I feel pity and regret. For Jerro, pity and fear. I feel pity and resolve for the King. For Qara I feel nothing.

And with that emptiness my fear and hatred had nothing to claw into. And I regained the calm a Commander should have.

On that sad realization, I saw Casavir, an anxious Kana, and ever wakeful Sand coming up to me for yet another last minute idea. It was going to be another long night.


End file.
